Buckshot Bear

When the pubs were busy Saturday lunchtime in a Bondi pub, Sydney, 1951

‘KANGAROO KING’ COLD CASE - 1980 ABC News. Andy Komarnicki was the owner of a kangaroo processing plant in the small Queensland town, where dead roos became pet food for hungry dogs all along the eastern seaboard. One night in January 1980, he made a routine trip to check on chiller rooms on the town's outskirts. His family haven't seen him since. And despite a $250,000 reward for information — and the proliferation of countless theories — they're still no closer to finding answers. Komarnicki feared he would be 'knocked off' According to police, Mr Komarnicki's car was found abandoned at a weir near the banks of the Balonne River, about 300 metres away from his business. It was unlocked, and the keys were still in the ignition. His stepson, Frank Poplawski, remembers going to the business the next morning with his brother, and looking from the gate to the main road. "He must have walked out to the main road, because there were lots of footprints on the main road. He had flat soled shoes on," Mr Poplawski says. "I'm guessing that someone pulled up on the road or someone was there and I reckon that's where they grabbed him." The family believes it must have been someone who knew the Kangaroo King. Mr Poplawski says his stepfather was concerned prior to his disappearance that someone was "going to knock him off". "But he would never talk to you about it," he says. "Things were not bright, right from the word go. Someone had definitely got rid of him." Involved in a meat racket One theory is that Mr Komarnicki's death may be linked to his involvement in Australia's notorious meat substitution racket, exposed in the early 80s. Mr Komarnicki's stepson says while meat from the St George processing plant was intended for pet food, it was also used for human consumption. "We used to process a couple of hundred roos per day, so that's a lot of skins and a lot of meat that's going somewhere," Mr Poplawski says. "I'm definitely sure it wasn't all going to pet. "When you would see those ads on TV advertising the pies [Mr Komarnicki] said 'that's my meat' and he wasn't joking. "I think they were using it for human consumption then." The meat substitution scandal erupted into the national consciousness in 1981, when an American food inspector found suspected horse meat in imported Australian "beef". A royal commission followed, revealing the practice of passing off pet-grade horse and kangaroo meat as fit for human consumption was widespread. Mr Komarnicki wasn't named in the inquiry. By then, he had been missing for more than a year. Kangaroo shooter Dick Kingdom — the number one suspect for a short time — believes a link to the racket was behind the disappearance. His theory is that Mr Komarnicki's competitors arranged a "hit". "He was selling to supermarkets in Sydney and they were making pies out of it," he says. "It sort of folded after he went. There was no opposition no more." Is he really dead? The missing person case remains a talking point in St George, where everyone has a theory about what happened to Mr Komarnicki. "Everybody was walking around, wondering if they were going to be next, who was going to be interviewed, who was coming from where," another kangaroo shooter, Ward Curtis, remembers. "There was talk that people from overseas got him, that he was an assassinator in the war and all this type of caper. "Nobody would sneak up on Andy because he always had a gun … Everybody knew it." As a body was never found, some locals suspect Mr Komarnicki survived the night, leaving town in secret in a plane. Another rumour is that Mr Komarnicki's body was destroyed in the processing plant. "A lot of people thought, 'someone's done the wrong thing and put him through the mincer'," local teacher Donna Worboys, who uses the story in her history lessons, says. Calls to reopen the case Ken Morris, a police officer in St George in the 1970s, was brought back to the town to investigate the disappearance. He says there was no indication of a plane in St George that night, and tests on the mincer at the kangaroo works found no evidence of human remains. An inquest in 1981 found insufficient evidence to name a suspect, concluding only that Mr Komarnicki had likely been abducted or led away from his business. But Mr Morris says if DNA testing had been available at the time, they might have solved the case. The family is still hopeful that the mystery will be solved — but until then, the stories will continue to circulate in St George.

Clancy of the Overflow Meaning of Clancy of the Overflow Clancy of the Overflow is a poem about a lawyer living in an overcrowded and dirty city who yearns for the freedom and carefree life of a drover (cowboy) in the Australian Outback. Clancy of the Overflow was written by Banjo Paterson and offers a romanticised view of rural life. The poet drew upon a chance experience he had when he sent a letter to a man named 'Clancy' at a sheep station (ranch) named 'Overflow'. He received a simple yet evocative reply which read: "Clancy's gone to Queensland droving, and we don't know where he are." Inspired by this reply, Banjo Paterson wrote this poem — Clancy of the Overflow. Clancy of the Overflow I had written him a letter which I had, for want of better Knowledge, sent to where I met him down the Lachlan, years ago, He was shearing when I knew him, so I sent the letter to him, Just "on spec", addressed as follows, "Clancy, of The Overflow". And an answer came directed in a writing unexpected, (And I think the same was written with a thumb-nail dipped in tar) Twas his shearing mate who wrote it, and verbatim I will quote it: "Clancy's gone to Queensland droving, and we don't know where he are." In my wild erratic fancy visions come to me of Clancy Gone a-droving "down the Cooper" where the Western drovers go; As the stock are slowly stringing, Clancy rides behind them singing, For the drover's life has pleasures that the townsfolk never know. And the bush hath friends to meet him, and their kindly voices greet him In the murmur of the breezes and the river on its bars, And he sees the vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended, And at night the wond'rous glory of the everlasting stars. I am sitting in my dingy little office, where a stingy Ray of sunlight struggles feebly down between the houses tall, And the foetid air and gritty of the dusty, dirty city Through the open window floating, spreads its foulness over all And in place of lowing cattle, I can hear the fiendish rattle Of the tramways and the buses making hurry down the street, And the language uninviting of the gutter children fighting, Comes fitfully and faintly through the ceaseless tramp of feet. And the hurrying people daunt me, and their pallid faces haunt me As they shoulder one another in their rush and nervous haste, With their eager eyes and greedy, and their stunted forms and weedy, For townsfolk have no time to grow, they have no time to waste. And I somehow rather fancy that I'd like to change with Clancy, Like to take a turn at droving where the seasons come and go, While he faced the round eternal of the cash-book and the journal — But I doubt he'd suit the office, Clancy, of "The Overflow".

LOL that's its tail

They are Corella's (one type of our cockatoos) blocking out the Red and Amber lights.

Wouldn't folks have kittens over these today!!!

Ya' always had to remember to take the baby outta' the stroller though.

I must admit 'biscuits & gravy' sounds a bit like the bloke I knew once that had an iced finger bun with sardines filling for lunch everyday.

“DUELLING” - 1800’s There was a time when a gentleman's reputation was worth dying for. In the 1800s when powerful, educated men determined to defend their social standing felt they had no other choice, they would meet on a duelling ground, weapons in hand. Duelling was a means of protecting one's honour. A process of ritual and rules. A form of dispute resolution so valued that, although illegal, lawmakers often turned a blind eye to it. Words that can kill Sometimes it only took one word or phrase to set two men on the duelling course. Slurs such as "liar", "coward", "rascal", "scoundrel" and even "puppy" were "serious insults that somehow or other got to the core of who you were as a gentleman, and often necessitated a visit to a duelling ground," Professor Freeman tells ABC RN's The History Listen. "As counterintuitive as it may seem, duelling was not about killing. Duelling wasn't about revenge. Duelling wasn't about trying to gun down your enemy. "It was to redeem an insult that had been made against you by proving that you were willing to die for your honour and enabling the person who gave the insult to go out onto the field redeem himself," she says. Duelling was always illegal. "Society tolerated it, even though theoretically to kill somebody in a duel was murder," Dr Banks says. "You actually find that, for instance, judges in trials did everything possible to ensure that the defendant acquitted." Dr Banks says the powerful in society – judges, lawyers, army officers and parliamentarians – all shared an honour culture. At times, honour was a quality successful careers depended on, says University of Sydney historian Catie Gilchrist. "If he was a gentleman involved in commerce, his word was very much something that he relied upon," she says. "In the military, an officer was always a gentleman and so if he felt his status as an officer had been impugned, then his gentlemanly status had been impugned as well." Duelling in Australia Perhaps the last duel in Australia was between Major Sir Thomas Mitchell and Sir Stuart Alexander Donaldson in 1851, in Centennial Park, Sydney. Thankfully both men walked away with their lives, and only Donaldson's hat was damaged in the altercation. Dr Gilchrist says Australia even had its own particular set of duel-inducing insults. "The worst thing to call a gentleman was a 'black guard', which meant a lowly menial person," Dr Gilchrist says. "Consider yourself horse whipped", is another insult that comes from this time. "Don't forget everyone rode horses back then ... the horse whip was an instrument of social placing. A beast, a convict, a child and a slave might be horse whipped," Dr Gilchrist says. The 'fundamental absurdity' of duelling It might seem paradoxical, but duels were actually intended to reduce violence, rather than increase it. "It's so framed by rituals. You're not supposed to look angry or act out of anger," Professor Freeman says. Dr Banks describes duels as a "halfway point" between the medieval world of generational feuds, think William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, and the modern mindset. "What the duel does is it says, there's been one moment of encounter to determine a particular issue and after the encounter's over, that matter is solved," he says. "It marks a period between the indiscriminate violence of the medieval period, when say, homicide was about 10 times as common in the UK as it is today, and the modern way. It's a transition point." Slowly, duels began to be seen as "ridiculous" in Britain, he explains. As the Church increased its power and influence, duelling presented a growing contradiction to its edict, "thou shalt not kill". From 1810 the Church campaigned against the practice. American political scientist John Mueller says at this time many began pointing out "the fundamental absurdity" of settling differences with duels. And while Dr Banks concurs that duelling is "a ridiculous way of solving human problems", he doesn't see that as distinguishing it from many other practices. "All societies have belief structures that are not rational," he says. Perhaps not all of them, however, have such very high stakes.